Zenas L. Martin, Quaker Pioneer in Cuba

ZENAS L. MARTIN, QUAKER PIONEER IN CUBA By Hiram H. Hilty* Zenas Lindley Martin was bom in Yadkin County, North Carolina, September 27, 1855, but moved with his family to Iowa at the age of four; his father was one of the many Quakers in the South who, being opposed to slavery, decided to emigrate rather than continue to live in a slave-holding society. Even into the 1890's the activities of the "Freedmen's Society" were reported in the minutes of the Iowa Yearly Meeting, reflecting the interest of Iowa Friends in the Negro. Though reared on a farm, Zenas Martin developed a preference for business. By the age of forty, in 1895, he was a successful druggist in the tiny village of Hubbard, Iowa. He had married and was the father of a maturing daughter, Evalyn. He and his wife, Susie Janeway Martin, were active members of the Hubbard Friends Meeting. In 1891 Susie was named president of the Women's Foreign Missionary Association of Iowa Yearly Meeting.1 Correspondence with daughter Evalyn between 1894 and 1898 reveals that the local meeting in Hubbard absorbed much of the time and interest of the entire family.2 In 1895 the Iowa Yearly Meeting of Friends entrusted Zenas Martin with the important task of developing a newly acquired property in Jamaica into a mission compound-community, and he made two extended visits to the island.3 In 1895 Zenas Martin was also named General Superintendent of Pastoral and Evangelistic Work of the Iowa Yearly Meeting.4 This work involved much travel, visiting meetings in Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota. Susie sometimes went with him, but usually she was left at home with a companion. Her health was delicate at this time and further declined to the point where she was finally unable to * Professor of Spanish, Guilford College 1 Minutes of Iowa Yearly Meeting, 1891 (Oskaloosa, Iowa), p. [69]. 2 Evalyn Martin was with an uncle at Argonia; Kansas, during most of this period. The correspondence between Zenas and Susie Martin and their daughter is now in the Quaker Collection of the Guilford College Library. 8 Foreign Mission Work of American Friends (Richmond, Ind., American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, 1912), p. 98; The American Friend, VII (March 29, 1900), 295. 4 TL· American Friend, II (Sept. 19, 1895), 914; see also Minutes of Iowa Yearly Meeting, 1899, p. 7. 81 82QUAKER HISTORY attend the sessions of the Women's Foreign Missionary Association in 1900.6 For nine years she had presided over its meetings. Although his wife's infirmity was a source of constant anxiety to him, it did not keep Zenas Martin at home. In 1897 he returned to Jamaica in the course of his duties as general superintendent. It proved to be a fateful journey. On his first visit he had become acquainted with Captain Lorenzo D. Baker of the Boston Fruit Company, and as he returned from Jamaica On a boat of that company in 1897 the two friends had leisure for long conversations. The coast of Cuba came in sight, and Captain Baker spoke of plans which his company had to open banana plantations on that island. He urged Iowa Friends to undertake missionary work on the Boston Fruit Company plantations in Cuba, as they had in Jamaica, and offered $1,000 of his own money to help.* When he returned to Iowa, Zenas Martin reported on his Jamaica visit and conveyed to Friends the invitation and offer of Captain Baker. As it happened, the matter was not left to Zenas Martin alone. When Captain Baker returned to Boston he called on the eminent Benjamin F. Trueblood7 and pressed his invitation to Friends on him. Trueblood immediately became interested and began to propagandize for the Cuban undertaking. Meanwhile, quite independent of all this, E. M. Sein, a Mexican Friends leader, was soliciting aid from American Friends to meet a request from "a Cuban pastor" for literature to use in Tampa "and at Santiago."8 A few weeks later, an American Friends missionary in Mexico, J. S. Turner, reported to Friends in Indiana that "our representative, a native minister in Havana, is now ready to put...